Ohne Titel

Alexa Adams and Flora Gill returned to the airiness of the debut collection that made fashion sit up and take notice a year ago. (One retailer was heard to complain of still being unable to buy the collection because of another's exclusive.) Armed with ideas about what Gill called "the sculptural form of body," they used the play between translucence and opacity to define a shape. They began with lean blazers inset with white meshan interesting idea that didn't quite geland skinny pants bandaged with a strip of fabric on each leg.

But, as Gill explained backstage, the collection was about the hard and the soft, and not everything was so strict. Skirts and lower halves of dresses in bias-cut layers of sheer chiffon looked almost cloudlike. Though suiting is their first love, the duo appears to be more interested in pushing knitwear, which they first delved into with Fall's boldly colored intarsia sweaters. They carried out their body-con concept with further iterations of their graphically contoured intarsia, but it was the gorgeous, drapey twinsets and the finale dresses of intricately plaited silk and cotton cord that won the day. When it works, Ohne Titel has a spare, sharp-edged elegance that's reminiscent of Adams' onetime boss Helmut Lang.